40 out ":t\O SHAVE" signs about twenty years ago, for reasons that, according to the barbers we consulted, included the arrival of the chromium blade; the arrival of the electric razor; the arrival of long-hair styles and the heard; the popularization of unisex bar- bershops and beauty parlors; the large number of men who were in the armed forces in the Second World War and had to start shaving them- selves and then, it turned out, didn't give up shaving themselves; too much trouble; very little profit. In the bar- bershops where shaves are still given, some are given by barbers who use the old-fashioned straight steel razor, which is known in the profession as the "cut- throat" razor. Most of the shaves are gi ven with a razor that looks like the old-fashioned straight razor but has a disposable chromium blade. For cus- tomers who request shaves with a gen- uine old-fashioned straight razor, about half the shops that give shaves have <W -- , -." .:0.. .". barbers who know how to hone the ra- zor on a stone, smooth it on a two- piece canvas-and-Ieather strop, and then give the shave. A few barbershops, like Jerry at Bergdorf, refuse to give a shave with anything but the straight razor. "We have Ambassador Frede- ric Mann and Selig Burrows and J ule Styne, and they want the real thing," Miss Katherine King, the manager of ] erry, told us. "We do at least six shaves a day. We're doing more now than we did ten years ago. The shave is coming back. We give the closest h . " save In town. At James at the Plaza, Mrs Marie Dussol, the manager, told us that ten per cent of her customers get shaves but that only one of them, a business- man named Charles Beer, insists on being shaved with the old-fashioned straight razor. "He can feel the differ- ence," Mrs. Dussol told us. In order to give shaves in this city, a barber must have a Master Barber , , ,# [fR IE .,.,. OF THE I f II ::: !. !<t " ^ * -11:. it' ...... " . . . 1 t . \.. .-... "" ..toO') """ "".... (.... .:. . )"..:.: . y. .. ..). .,' u tf "Y ou have to be nuts to want to be President) ladies and gentlemen and our candidate is nuts.') MARCH 10. 1980 license issued by the State of New York. Requirements for the license are: attending a barber school for six months and working as an apprentice in a barbershop for eighteen months, or working as an apprentice in a bar- bershop for twenty-four months-and then taking and passing an examina- tion given by the Division of Licensing of New York's State Department. This examination consists of a practical demonstratIon and an oral test, and includes a section on the shave: apply- ing the lather, sharpening the razor wIth the strop, and shaving with the straight razor. Applying hot towels IS not Included. Most people who cut haIr don't need a Master Barber li- cense. They go to a beauty school for a thousand hours, pass a hairdress- ing test, and get a Cosmetology license. But Cosmetology graduates are not allowed to do shaves. (The New York State Department of Education, which supervises and licenses beauty schools, informed us that "beauty school" is "the generic term" for "cosmetology school," and that the shave is not part of the cosmetology-school cur- riculum.) At the Atlas Barber School, at 44 Third Avenue, which is the only classic, shave-teaching barber school left in the city, Matthew Ra- guso, the director and co-owner, told us that at the moment he has forty- five students, an of whom are study- ing, among other things, the shave. Mr. Raguso told us that he has been in charge of the school since 1957. Tuition is $1,935 for a thousand hours of instruction, of which three hundred are devoted to teaching the shave. Upon enrollment, each stu- den t gets a kit of tools. Along with a pair of scissors, two combs, two kinds of clippers, and a textbook, the kIt holds a straight razor, a hone, and a strop. Mr. Raguso told us that he is a faithful devotee of the old-fashioned shave. "Here we teach, The customer can feel the shave," Mr. Raguso told us. "We teach, It is very important to get the right lather, very important to get a lather machine that gives the nght lather. Very important, because we don't use brushes anymore. \Ve teach, It is very important to tell whether a beard is a soft beard or a tough beard. Very important how to use the hot towels to soften the tough beard. Then we teach how to strop on canvas, how to strop on leather-five strokes on each side. We teach, The shave is artzstic. With a straight ra- zor." "What about disposable blades in the imitation straight razor?" we asked. "Garbage!" Mr. Raguso said